


The Unlikely Adventure of Prince Baby

by verity



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Adaptation, Babies, Crack, Cruise, F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-12-11
Updated: 2010-12-11
Packaged: 2017-10-13 15:18:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/138759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/pseuds/verity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock and John must masquerade as newlyweds on a cruise, accompanied by Harry, Clara, and their new baby. It's for a case!</p><p>Complete, unapologetic, total crack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is an extremely loose adaptation of _Pursuit to Algiers_ (the 1945 film with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce), which I watched approximately 20 times between 1997  & 2005 as it is my dad's favorite movie, but which I have made no attempt to rewatch or research beyond what's in the Wikipedia article. So this screwball romantic comedy is brought to you by hazy memory and, well, my great desire to write a screwball comedy with Harry and Clara and a cruise ship. And babies. (This is not, however, babyfic, so fear not, gentle reader.)

**Here's how it started out:**  
"I need a holiday," I said. I leaned back in my chair, propped my feet up next to Sherlock's on the ottoman, and rubbed my eyes.

There wasn't anything in particular that was getting on my nerves that Monday _(he remembers, now, that it was a Monday)_ , just a general malaise. It was February, the surgery was full of red-cheeked children with runny noses and the occasional case of the flu just to liven things up. Sherlock hadn't any cases on and had spent most of the week playing his violin at odd hours, sulking on the couch, and attempting to destroy of all of the kitchen surfaces with various kinds of acid. He _claimed_ it was on purpose, anyway.

This day, though, this Monday, was uneventful. I came home to Sherlock sulking quietly and only emanating mild waves of resentment, the takeaway curry I'd brought with me was still warm, and the cold I'd been nursing all last week was mostly gone. There was no cloud gloomier hanging over us than the fact that it was Monday, the first day of the work week which Sherlock finds so unbearably dull.

It was dull. It _was_ boring. _(Maybe that was it, he thinks.)_

"Hmm," Sherlock replied. He nudged my feet over to the right. I looked at my sliver of the ottoman sadly.

We watched the X-Factor together in comfortable silence. The most rubbish dance troupe had been eliminated the previous week, and the only remaining contestant about whom Sherlock had any real grounds for complaint was that strange man with the stilts and magic tricks. I went to bed early and slept soundly for once.

 

 _Sherlock comes up behind him and starts reading over his shoulder, like he always does. He rests one hand on the back of my chair and braces the other against the desk, and for a moment he leans into John in a way John finds most agreeable. Then he says, with a tone someone else might mistake for irritation, "Sentimental rot."_

 _"How would you write it, then?" John asks him, turning around in his chair. "The whole thing, as I said at the time, was rather implausible. And if you deny it was supposed to be a holiday there'll be no takeaway for you for the week, I swear."_

 _"I'll get the takeaway." There's an unmistakeable glimmer in Sherlock's eye._

 _"No, you_ won't. _"_

 _Right about then, Sherlock kisses him. It's quite pleasant, but my more than familiar with Sherlock's tactics when it comes to distraction. He pulls away. Sherlock pouts. "Fine. Start with the case, if you must. The diamonds."_

 _Ah, yes, the diamonds. John almost forgot them. "The fish and chips," he says._

 _"The newspaper."_

 _"All right. And stop licking my neck, you're– that's not fair."_

 

 **Here's how Sherlock claims it began:**  
We were on the way home from Angelo's a few weeks later when a man in front of us dropped a newspaper behind him. I almost tripped over it. "You've lost your paper!" I shouted, but the man – average height, shoulders a bit stooped, elderly perhaps, though the hat he wore thrust his face into shadow – didn't respond, but hurried on ahead.

"No, he hasn't," Sherlock said brusquely. He took the paper out of my hands and stepped under the nearest street lamp to study it. "It's meant for us."

"How–" I began, but then I took a closer look. An article about the suspicious theft of the Duchess of Davenport's jewels at a charity ball the previous weekend had been circled, and certain words in the adjacent article about the city's best fish and chips underlined. "Can't see why they didn't call or send you an email. This seems a rather roundabout way to go about it."

"Assuredly," my flatmate agreed. "A poor attempt at piquing my interest."

We started toward home once more, and, rounding the corner, Sherlock chucked the paper in the nearest bin.

The next day, the comforting silence of my lunch hour was interrupted by my phone chirping with a text from Mycroft. "I have borrowed Sherlock for today. No need to wait up. I will return him at my convenience. MH"

 

 _John stretches, leaning back in his chair and tipping it up just a bit. "No, no," he mutters. "I've left out Harry entirely. That's no good." A bit louder, "_ Sherlock. _"_

 _"Yes?" Sherlock's voice drifts over lazily from the couch._

 _"You're going to have to help me out with this bit. I don't know anything about the baby."_

 _"You should leave that for the end."_

 _"Suspense?" John raises an eyebrow._

 _"Accuracy."_

 _Of course. In any case, John thinks he has a better idea of where he should begin. He mouses over the subject box and pauses for a moment._ The Mysterious Affair of the Cruise Ship? _Rather silly._ Pursuit to Orlando? _Not much better._

 _An idea strikes him and his mouth curves up into a involuntary smile. Of course._

  
**The Unlikely Adventure of Prince Baby**   



	2. the invitation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The author's knowledge of the differences between the US & the UK is low. In case of conflict between fact and fantasy, try to suspend disbelief and embrace the crack.

Harry and Clara visited me in the hospital, after the bombs and the pool and the head injury, and there had been some teary bedside reconciliation – more between Harry and Clara than Harry and me. A few weeks later, I sent congratulations and a second housewarming present, but I still hadn't been to visit.

The day after the theft of the Duchess of Davenport's emeralds was all over TMZ (thank Mrs. Hudson for the bulletin), I returned home from doing the shopping to find Sherlock beaming at me, in a way that would have been unnerving if I had had any nerves left for Sherlock to un-, and holding up a blue envelope. "We have received an invitation!" my friend announced. Our landlady must have brought the post up; Sherlock didn't appear to have moved all day from the couch all.

"An invitation. Very nice." I deposited the shopping on the kitchen table. "What to?"

"Your sister's baby shower."

It took me a moment to process this. "Wait. What? _Harry?_ "

"You have only one sister. As far as I have determined."

"Wait a minute. We? Sorry, I'm still stuck on the fact that there's my sister, and a baby, and a shower, and _she's_ invited _you_ to it."

"Why shouldn't she invite me?" Sherlock looked put off.

"Sherlock. Topic at hand. Namely, my sister. Child. Give me that."

Sighing with the agony of such concession, Sherlock held the envelope aloft and settle back into his chair. After a moment, I gave up and retrieved the thing from him. The envelope was vibrant blue, stiff under my fumbling fingers, and the enclosed card was covered in cheerful orange engraving. _OUR LONG-AWAITED ARRIVAL WILL BE JOINING US NEXT MONTH_ , it shouted. _HOPEFULLY, YOU WILL, TOO!_

"Your sister's wife is American," Sherlock was observing drily. "Interesting. Spirited, strong maternal instinct."

There was also a note scribbled on the back in Harry's familiar blocky print: _Foster kid! You remember, I think. Don't know if able to keep him for the long haul yet, but Clara v. excited. And a footnote: Clara coveting Lincoln Logs. For herself. xoxo, H_

"Engineer." Sherlock steepled his fingers beneath his chin. "Your sister's an architect, that's how they met. Clara is probably expecting practical items, but impending motherhood has evoked strong nostalgia for her childhood and home country. Hence the stationery, despite the fact that most of the recipients will interpret the colors as that of Lady Margaret Hall."

"Lincoln Logs?" My brain was still trying to catch up. I remembered, dimly, a letter I'd received before the separation, that they'd started the process to foster kids, and thinking that the stress would probably drive Harry round the bend. Unfortunate accuracy there. But Harry seemed happy enough now.

"Building toy. Gender neutral, encourages creative play. Not age-appropriate, though."

"Where would I find them?" Then, "Just a moment." Ah, there. Hello again, cognitive function. "You've ordered them, haven't you. You've RSVPed. There's no RSVP card in here."

Sherlock flashed me a radiant smile.

There was something wrong about all this, I thought, no, things. So many things, and so deeply, deeply wrong: Harry, excited about parenthood; Clara, excited about Lincoln Logs instead of organic cotton nappies; Sherlock, excited about a baby shower, for God's sake. Sherlock, voluntarily doing any kind of household shopping or anything helpful, really.

Sherlock had opened my mail. That was normal, at least: I clung to the invasion of my privacy like a man clinging to a life preserver in the aftermath of a shipwreck.

Then I looked at the couch. Then, to the desk, and back again. "Your computer," I blurted stupidly. "Mine's upstairs."

"Very good, John," my flatmate said. "Pass it to me. I need to check the weather in Edinburgh."

"We're going to Edinburgh?"

"No."

"I'll figure this out," I muttered as I walked over to the desk. "Don't you think I won't."

For the third time that afternoon, Sherlock grinned, his mouth curving up in a rather ghastly fashion. "Isn't it fun?" Of course, it was probably mostly terrifying by association: smiles like that tend to be in response to death by hacksaw or proportionate to the likelihood of one of us getting knifed in a dark alley.

"We're going to die," I predicted. "Horribly. Violently. Circus performers will be involved, yet again. Possibly gypsies."

"Such imagination," Sherlock tutted. He shut the laptop and placed it on the coffee table before rolling over to interrogate the sinister interior of the couch. (I Hoover the thing ever week. It's sinister.) "Now, be quiet. I have to introspect."

"You're napping."

"Am not."

"I'm going to put on some tea."

"Quiet, I said."

"Fine."

Tea always helps. "Placebo," Sherlock imparted from the couch. Reaching for the PG Tips (keeping loose tea in the flat seems like it might invite death by poison or mold or something worse), I ignored him. Quiet. I'd give him quiet.


	3. the shower

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh yeah, I went there.

Just to spite Sherlock, I put the nappies on his card. Harry's note aside, I know Clara, and her affection for notched wooden logs was not likely to be trumped by more pragmatic concerns. And if one of them was a bit less on the organic side and sported a fine Man U print, well, I wasn't letting any prospective nephew be brainwashed by American footie without a fight.

Harry clapped me on the shoulder affectionately after she unwrapped them. "Perfect," she announced to the assembled crew, whose themed gifts were sharply skewed toward rainbows and robots. (Clara felt that robots were acceptably gender-neutral.) "This will appease Dad when he comes by and asks for the fortieth time if we're raising him on Elton."

"I hate Elton," interjected one of her uni mates. "'Candle in the Wind,' Diana, all that. And so flashy."

I rose to the man's defense. "I think you're being a bit harsh on Dad, Harry, he likes 'Tiny Dancer' as much as any of us. And, for the record, _I_ liked 'Candle in the Wind.' Both versions."

Most of crowd stared at me as if I'd bought the child custom WHAM! nappies without any sense of irony. Harry gave me one of those eloquent looks that suggested paragraphs about how it was gauche to hassle me about bringing my flatmate to her baby shower and continuing to assert our relationship was completely platonic as I presented her with organic nappies and defended "Candle in the Wind" in the middle of said baby shower, but she was certainly thinking it, and she knew that I knew she was thinking it, so.

"Let's open Sherlock's present," Clara said cheerfully; she has a keen nose for sibling tension. Tearing off the wrapping paper (posh, probably department store), she gasped with delight when she saw the Lincoln Logs. "Oh, _Sherlock._ How did you know?"

"I _am_ the world's only consulting detective," he replied with his usual lack of modesty, right at the same time as Harry said, "I told John."

Then something truly horrifying occurred. Harry and Sherlock locked eyes across the room and shared one of those moments of true spiritual communion wherein kindred souls meet and find their houses to be alike in dignity, etc, etc. There could be no good in any alliance between my sister and my flatmate. None. Clara and I get on quite well together, it's true, but we're simple folk: she's an engineer, I'm a doctor, our work is about making things work right and fixing them when they don't. We argue amicably about the definition of "football," she tells me what Harry wants for her birthday and Christmas, normal things like that. Harry, however, is an innately devious soul. She does not take after the Watson side of the family, the side that is content with things like Elton John and pudding and a nice spot of couch-Hoovering. No, she likes arcane jazz LPs and Clara and Clara.

Sherlock likes classical music and crime and finds almost everything and everyone else tedious (unless they're dead or a criminal). That fact that Harry had drawn his interest did not speak in her favor. Nor did it bode well for my future. That gaze promised conspiracy.

This all happened in the span of a second, of course. The spell was broken by half the guests asking what Lincoln Logs were and the other demanding that she open up the box immediately. Sherlock had, of course, gotten a deluxe set, and on my card.


End file.
